Contact: Jill Martin, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, 615-782-8417, [email protected]

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Aug. 25 /Christian Newswire/ -- Dr. Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, commented on today’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration of Plan B for non-prescription sale to women 18 and older:

“It’s a sad day for America. Allowing drugs with such powerful physiological and emotional effects to be sold over the counter to adults without a prescription will have significant consequences, none of them good.

“I am fearful that many adult men will purchase Plan B and use it in the seduction of girls who are not yet 18 and who cannot purchase the drug for themselves. It will become part of the sexual predator’s seduction kit. People who dismiss this scenario are simply unaware of the facts about the current relationship and dating habits between men 21 and older and younger girls in the United States. Plan B will be used by sexually predatory men to assure young girls that no pregnancy will occur.

“This decision will lead to increased rates of sexual activity for younger women outside of wedlock, resulting in physical, emotional, and spiritual consequences, including increased rates of sexually transmitted diseases, against which Plan B offers no protection. It will certainly result in the pharmacological, spontaneous abortion of large numbers of babies, who will be conceived but known only to God. Plan B will snuff out their lives before implantation can occur. Although no one will know whether conception occurred, and the Plan B-induced abortion will be at the earliest stages of the baby’s development, it is still the medically induced ending of an innocent human life.”

The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.2 million members in over 43,500 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBC's ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn., and Washington, D.C.